The man who wrote the Shakespeare plays recognized this involuntary operation of even his own transcendent intellect, when he said: 

     “Our poesy is a gum which oozes
     From whence ’tis nourished.”

It came as the Arabian tree distilled its “medicinal gum”; it was the mere expression of an internal force, as much beyond his control as the production of the gum was beyond the control of the tree.

But in primitive races mind repeats mind for thousands of years.  If a tale is told at a million hearth-fires, the probabilities are small, indeed, that any innovation at one hearth-fire, however ingenious, will work its way into and modify the narration at all the rest.  There is no printing-press to make the thoughts of one man the thoughts of thousands.  While the innovator is modifying

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the tale, to his own satisfaction, to his immediate circle of hearers, the narrative is being repeated in its unchanged form at all the rest.  The doctrine of chances is against innovation.  The majority rules.

When, however, a marvelous tale is told to the new generation—­to the little ones sitting around with open eyes and gaping mouths—­they naturally ask, “Where did all this occur?” The narrator must satisfy this curiosity, and so he replies, “On yonder mountain-top,” or “In yonder cave.”

The story has come down without its geography, and a new geography is given it.

Again, an ancient word or name may have a signification in the language in which the story is told different from that which it possessed in the original dialect, and, in the effort to make the old fact and the new language harmonize, the story-teller is forced, gradually, to modify the narrative; and, as this lingual difficulty occurs at every fireside, at every telling, an ingenious explanation comes at last to be generally accepted, and the ancient myth remains dressed in a new suit of linguistic clothes.

But, as a rule, simple races repeat; they do not invent.

One hundred years ago the highest faith was placed in written history, while the utmost contempt was felt for all legends.  Whatever had been written down was regarded as certainly true; whatever had not been written down was necessarily false.

We are reminded of that intellectual old brute, Dr. Samuel Johnson, trampling poor Macpherson under foot, like an enraged elephant, for daring to say that he had collected from the mountaineers of wild Scotland the poems of Ossian, and that they had been transmitted, from mouth to mouth, through ages.  But the great epic of the son of Fingal will survive, part of the widening

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heritage of humanity, while Johnson is remembered only as a coarse-souled, ill-mannered incident in the development of the great English people.

But as time rolled on it was seen that the greater part of history was simply recorded legends, while all the rest represented the passions of factions, the hates of sects, or the servility and venality of historians.  Men perceived that the common belief of antiquity, as expressed in universal tradition, was much more likely to be true than the written opinions of a few prejudiced individuals.